wow @
Red Panda You put into words so much of my experience with my ESFPs.
Okey first answer to the simple question Do I get along with them easily? No. I wouldn't even have a relationship with them if we weren't family members. ISFPs are waaaay easier for me to get along for some reason, and it's not the introversion, it's something else, it must be the position of their Ni with the Fi specifically. I haven't studied them too much tho, so I can't say. But it's like Red Panda said: ego clash. I don't experience this with ISFPs or ENFPs or.. I don't know.. it's something very specific about ESFPs. Both my grandmother and my mother are ESFPs (they've hated each other their whole lives, precisely because of the ego clash), also one of my female cousins on my dad's side, and two aunts.
Secondly, I want to say that everything I'll write here is obvsly based on personal experiences, not universalities, and also that enneagram plays a part.
The ESFPs in my life have this huge ego, they clash with everyone, not just with me. They are antagonistic people for some reason, but only when they form deep relationships which isn't often. They actually keep their inner self to themselves and their family and their best friend, and they hide it from coworkers, acquaintances and some friends. This is why their coworkers and friends always tell them "Omg you are so zen! I feel so good in your presence, you're an angel" and my ESFPs whisper to my ear "If only they knew me ahahaha I have such a hot temper" and I'm like "Yeah if only they knew you lol".
My ESFPs are always surrounded by a million people, but they don't actually have true friends. Nobody truly knows them, only their spouse, children & best friend. I told them that this was my observation of them, and they agreed that they are private although they don't look like it.
lots of ego clash. I can't speak to her easily without feeling like we are antagonizing each other, so basically most we talk about are things that happen in our lives that our egos don't get mixed in, so things irrelevant to each other.
Exactly.
The only reason these ESFPs are in my life is because we are family members, otherwise they aren't people I would be friends with. They are Black & White thinkers. This is not something I alone believe, they are accused of B&W thinking by their spouses, children and other family members at family reunions/lunch/dinner. Their Fi is very strong in a hot-temper way, it's like they can't channel it well or control it, and it comes out like a bazooka, destroying everything figuratively speaking. This strong Fi wouldn't be a problem, as my Fi is obvsly dominant, but it's the ingredient of the How they express it -the hot temper- and how much they need you to validate them, that becomes a problem.
I get along with other Fi users perfectly fine, like ISFPs, INFPs and ENFPs. It's a mystery for me where this extreme Universalization of their B&W comes from. What I mean by Universalization is that they process life like this:
- They have a personal experience,
- They make their personal experience universal and proclaim "This is how the world works". This is final. Everybody now come agree with me, otherwise there's war.
An example is if the ESFP has 2 failed relationships, they proclaim that relationships don't work,
universally. You can tell them "I've had wonderful relationships. It's not black & white. Some work and some don't..." and they will get super aggressive and get really worked up and in your face because they are seeking that you agree with them. They need you to validate their point, and if you stand your ground and say "Agree to disagree because this conversation isn't going anywhere" they throw a fit. Literally 70-year-olds and 40-year-olds throwing a 4-year-old fit is something an INFP cannot process with peace or patience. We will think that this person lacks a brain, and lacks a self-control that is something INFPs value very much. I don't deal with impulsive out-of-control people, because I can't respect them.
I've seen one of my ESFP practically chop off her teenage niece's head because they disagreed politically. The niece was just expressing her opinions, but the ESFPs just get ugly. They won't stop until they get their points validated externally, they can't live with just their opinions inside their heads in solitude.
I've had my head nearly chopped off so many times that my relationship with them is purely Se-Ne. Like Panda said, I avoid everything important: any talk of relationships, work, politics, spirituality, philosophy... And trust me, they have an opinion about everything, which I appreciate because I do too. I appreciate people with ideas and passion. But I appreciate from a distance in this case. My relationships with them are based on traveling together, going to the beach, exchanging beauty tips, shopping together, exercise together, trying out different restaurants and having sensory experiences, and when we must talk, we talk about other people, so it's mostly gossip.
If we get personal, it's like talking to a wall, because they have their opinions formed already, and they are listening to my stories purely through their filter. So many times they are listening to me in silence, and when I'm done it's like I never shared anything, because they go back to their already formulated story in their heads about how the world works. If my story doesn't fit into their formula, they discard it as "non-existent", or that I "dreamed it", that I "never experienced such a thing because it simply doesn't exist". An example:
- ESFP had a couple of experiences with men who wore red hats and those men happened to be buddhists.
- I meet a man with a red hat who tells me he's christian.
- I tell ESFP I met this man, she appears to be listening to my story... when I'm finished, she replies:
"So when are you breaking up with the buddhist?"
and I'm like "What buddhist?"
"The red hatted man you met"
"He's not buddhist, he's christian"
"Nono, he's buddhist. I know this because I've already dated men with red hats, and they were buddhists, therefore ALL men with red hats in the entire world are buddhist. If you don't want to accept this fact, it's your problem and you are crazy. But it's a
fact"
They make these correlations that they set in stone, and they lack any real substance to me. And these ideas are immovable. Once they believe it, they do forever.
I also learned what Thinkers typically refer to when they say "Feelers are irrational" when I applied it to my ESFPs. I have never seen an ounce of rationality in them, sigh.
Now, they are my go-to people for the adventures I crave that I usually have to do alone because nobody wants to come with me (ppl are attached to their routines and their planning and safety). ESFPs are the only ones who will say yes to every crazy idea I propose, and I love that. We can do crazy stuff like hop on a plane and go to Ibiza or we can just go to a museum and comment on the art. They are very interested in art and history, and I love that. This is very curious because my ESFPs are not intellectual at all, they haven't read a book in their lives, they can't even spell because they hate reading and stuff... but they are curious about documentaries and visual things, so that's good. We talk about cinema and movies and art a lot.
We can't talk about anything theoretical or abstract, and whenever I've slipped and gone on a theoretical attempt at discussion, things get ugly. The ESFP will interpret everything I say literally. They don't understand double meanings, reading between the lines, or jokes, or sarcasm, or anything. Our senses of humor are opposites, so we can never laugh together. There is no mental click. I must always stay in the literal plane when talking with them and be careful not to slip up.
Also like Panda mentioned, they take things personally very easily. Which is why they're highly antagonistic with everyone they encounter. Like I said, it's not just me, I witness this as they engage in conversations with twenty other family members, plus their spouse and children. I can understand this sort of Fi thing if we're talking about teenagers or 20-somethings, but I think that by the time you're in your 40s, 60s and 70s... you should be past this, you should've evolved.
harder for her to be open to new things, especially from an N perspective. She believes there's nothing new to learn about ourselves after ~27, nor that we can form new beliefs and other weird things like that. Basically she feels like an unmovable rock
This exactly.
It's not something that I alone experience, the rest of family members think the same.
Also, how do you think a romantic relationship between an ESFP male and an INFP female would work?
I don't think it would work, based on my experience.
Apart from everything I explained above, there are so many other problems. I'm trying hard not to write a frikkin' dissertation so I'm omitting a lot of things xD
As an INFP with Selp-Preservation in my stacking, I absolutely need stability, reliability and punctuality in a spouse. I need someone who is self-controlled, not impulsive and who thinks before speaking/acting.
ESFPs are the opposite of all that. They are predictable in the sense that I already know to expect perpetual impunctuality and instability. They would make a terrible spouse to me because I would feel constantly on edge trying to prepare myself psychologically for their next whim, and all the craziness they come up with on a daily basis. They would spend their money on businesses that even I know beforehand will not work. But they operate from a sense of adventure and irrationality, which is why their businesses always fail and they can never finish a single course/class they enroll in. And the more their loved ones tell them "Don't go there, don't do that, don't invest there, don't go home with that man... ALL the red flags are fucking evident... everyone can see them, why can't you?" the ESFP is like yolooooo. Then fails/gets hurt, as everyone expected. Then they blame external forces/the government/bad fortune, not their whimsical character and decision-making.
I believe that they have their heart in the right place. But our personalities don't gel.